Changing software and changing procedures are the biggest inhibitors to adoption of new technologies. VTL technology has had its initial success by minimizing the barrier to adoption. It pretends to be tape.

New technologies such as MAID, LTO-4 tapes, VTL hybrids, encryption, data de-duplications, continuous data protection and many others are the young pretenders. There comes a point when users will want them to be recognized for what they are and what they can contribute.

Many different scenarios could lead to this recognition. B/R vendors can re-architect to allow new technology objects to be integrated and enable end-to-end management of the whole process. Open standards could emerge. Appliance-based solutions could add a new control point, especially in the archiving T2/T3 space.

Action Item: Vendors need to address how these new technologies can be integrated into the backup, restore, disaster recovery and archiving requirements of organizations. Minimizing the adoption barriers is likely to determine vendor success.